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1936 Stout Scarab: The World’s First Minivan?

The 1936 Stout Scarab came about in the early 1930s when William B. Stout, head of the Stout Engineering Laboratories in Dearborn, Michigan, dreamed of rear-engine/rear-wheel drive. “When we finally ‘unhitch Old Dobbin’ from the automobile,” he wrote in Scientific American, “the driver will have infinitely better vision from all angles. The automobile will be lighter and more efficient and yet safer, the ride will be easier, and the body will be more roomy without sacrificing maneuverability.”

The Stout Scarab was a streamlined, fenderless, monoform six-passenger sedan that can stake a claim as the world’s first minivan. With a stubby front end, a boxy middle and a gloriously curved rear, the car certainly resembled its beetle namesake, the scarab.

The packaging was probably the Scarab’s greatest contribution to the development of the modern car. The wheels were placed at the corners, not unusual for the time, but rather than following the convention of expressing the fenders and running boards as separate design elements, the car’s body stretched right over them in a single, sleek form.

The engine was located in the rear, and the hood and front-end assembly were minimised. This allowed the passenger cabin to be stretched out between the wheels, giving the volume of a small room and the appointments to match. The driver sat immediately behind the front wheel, creating the first cab-forward architecture.

Art Deco design details included the winged moustache sitting between the two eye-like headlights, and over a smiling hood shutline, chrome wraparound bumpers, and an epic waterfall grille that extended from the top of the rear window down across the engine to the bumper below.

The interior was accessed either through a driver’s door or a single middle door on the passenger side. The driver’s seat and the rear bench seat were fixed, but other seats could be moved around to face each other, creating a traveling social space, complete with a small table.

The seats could be removed and the table folded out to allow space for a small portable office for the traveling businessman, complete with a bed. The seats were leather and chrome, and the interior finishes were light wood panelling and a polished wicker headliner.

“The interior of the car is extremely comfortable and roomy, with a table and movable chairs,” reported The Phillips Shield, a publication of the Phillips 66 petroleum company.

The creative engineering of the Scarab was equal to the packaging, employing one of the first examples of monocoque construction and four-wheel independent suspension.

The first running prototype Scarab was built in 1932 and subsequent cars were built over the rest of the decade. Stout had never intended to build more than 100 cars a year, at a price of $5000 (or around $89,000 today) and they were to be sold on an “invitation only-basis”. Records are missing and stories conflicting, but between six and nine Scarabs were built, each different according to the owner’s tastes.

Stout abandoned his Scarab project as World War II intervened, and he sold his company and services to Consolidated Vultee Aviation Aircraft (Convair). However, after the war, he developed one more Scarab – the Experimental. Working with Owens-Corning, the car was the world’s first to feature either a fibreglass body or pneumatic suspension.

William Stout, left, with a Scarab.

A final, updated version constructed in 1946, the Stout Scarab Experimental, utilized a fiberglass body shell—claimed to be the world’s first—and air suspension. That’s Bill Stout at the wheel. This car still exists today in the collection of the Detroit Historical Society.

Today, miraculously, five Scarabs still exist, and two of these are in running condition. The Scarab and William Stout remain an inspiration to designers, especially now as we consider anew the interior space of the car without a driver. Will it have the flexibility and functionality of the Scarab?

Stout’s talents for transferring technology between one form of transport to another should inspire us to look around for trends and inspiration in unlikely places. And lastly, Stout’s personal engineering and design motto, “Simplicate (as opposed to complicate) and add lightness” – often wrongly ascribed to Colin Chapman – inspires us in an era of over-designed objects and environments.